Log in member
We talk with Sir Ian Livingstone about some of his many gaming adventures: From securing Tomb Raider and celebrating Games Workshop’s 50th anniversary, to his ongoing Fighting Fantasy books and Henry Cavill’s upcoming Warhammer adaptation.
"Hi friends, I'm at the San Diego Comic-Con in Málaga and I'm here joined by Sir Ian Livingstone and this is beautiful because we just had a panel together, which is a milestone for me personally but also the third time I've seen you in Spain. There's something to Spain that we always meet in beautiful places Tenerife, Barcelona, Málaga now, so thank you so much once again for joining us."
"We talked about your whole career a little bit, of course, because it's a long story, right?
But we talked about three blocks, which were Games Workshop, Warhammer, then Fighting Fantasy and then Eidos, Tomb Raider and Hitman. Let me start with the last one.
What do you think was special when you saw Tomb Raider and Hitman to actually grab them?
Well, Tomb Raider was a really special moment because we'd floated Eidos on the London Stock Exchange in 1995 and we had an opportunity to buy the only other company in the space, CentreGold, and CentreGold owned Core Design in Derby."
"So being the games geek guy at Eidos, I was tasked with looking at all their games in development.
So I drove to Derby, to Core Design, met Jeremy Heath-Smith, who's the managing director, went into his offices and he showed me around all the games that were in development, and some were okay, but nothing like, wow, until the very last room.
And I walked in and you could say, in a strange way, it's love at first sight, I guess."
"There was this female character on the screen and she was moving into the screen.
So most games in those days, in the mid-nineties, were 2D side-scrolling games.
And here's one of the very first games with not only a 3D character, but a female 3D character.
And the camera was also moving as well, so you could look up and down."
"And so it had incredible technology, incredible graphics, and this unique character.
And it had these three pillars of exploration, puzzle-solving, and combat.
And I thought, wow.
Yeah, like making up for what would be the action-adventure genre back in the day."
"So that was just, we have to have this.
So we bought the company and we launched Tomb Raider in October 1996.
I think we thought we'd sell 100,000 units and ended up selling 7 million copies of the first one.
But it all goes down to the team."
"They were incredible.
Toby Gard from creating Lara Croft into the...
Laura Cruz.
Very small.
Well, as you saw in the presentation, his first sketch was called Laura Cruz."
"And we thought that didn't sound very English.
So somebody went through her telephone book and said, Croft! That sounds very English."
"So she became Lara Croft.
And you were the games geek because you were into game design.
Not only, I mean, Fighting Fantasy and Warhammer and being related to D&D, but also video game design of your own."
"So how do you recall those days and then your time with Eidos compared to what today is called an indie studio?
Would you say that what you guys were is what today is an indie studio?
Well, in the early days of Games Workshop, we were indies."
"We were two guys living in a van for three months.
I meant more for video games.
As in Tomb Raider, its scale.
It wasn't the so-called AAA."
"There wasn't such thing.
It was a small team, but it was still creating effectively a AAA game.
So the funding requirements were a lot less.
And of course, the games were a lot smaller because the horsepower of the CPUs and PlayStation was obviously nothing like as big as it is today."
"So the constraints were a lot larger and those teams were a lot smaller.
There was certainly an independent feel about Core Design for sure.
They were allowed to do whatever they want to do effectively.
But fast forward to today's environment for video games, it's obviously a lot more competitive."
"It's a $250 billion a year industry.
There are thousands of games released every year.
Navigating Steam is not easy.
Discovery is a challenge."
"So acquiring users, monetizing users, retaining users in a very competitive landscape is very difficult.
And of course, there's been a recent correction, for want of a better expression, of the industry following too much content being created during the pandemic."
"And now a lot of people have sadly lost their jobs.
But the games industry in itself is only going to continue to get bigger and better over time.
It's a historical inevitability."
"Everyone will continue to play games.
Look at Generation Z, Generation Alpha.
It's their first choice of entertainment is interactive and that obviously is video games."
"So long-term outlook is brilliant despite the current economic headwinds.
Okay, going further back in time, we were talking about Fighting Fantasy.
You told me how it came to be during the panel.
As you were playing with dice, you were role-playing and then you sort of wanted to add the writing and to make it come together with rolling the dice, right?
So would you say that was the key for its success back in the day?
That it wasn't just another choose-your-own-adventure with wonderful writing, of course, but also that you could make your character, you could throw the dice when you were combating the..."
"Well, we'd never seen [it as] a choose-your-own-adventure book at all.
We had been playing Dungeons & Dragons for seven years and we wanted to have a role-playing experience.
So it never entered our head not to have dice."
"So we wanted to strip out the difficulties of playing a role-playing game with multiple players into a single-player experience with the games master replaced by the book."
"So all you could do is give him multi-choice options, but give them lots of options.
And so most books are...
Well, all books are a passive experience where you read about somebody else's adventures, but we wanted our Final Fantasy books to be a book in which you, the reader, are the hero, so empowering them through choice."
"So there are hundreds of ways of going through the book, set in a fantasy world of monsters and magic, but only one true way of getting through.
And the dice adds that tension and excitement like it does in a role-playing game."
"So you're navigating the adventure, making the choices, hopefully the right ones.
My job is to try and lure you to your death because I want to see you fail, of course, and you think, ah, I'll try again."
"And the dice adds that element of luck and excitement.
And you are writing.
I remember when we met in Barcelona many years ago, you had stopped writing for a while, but you showed me your beautiful notebook, and now you are writing for a new Fighting (Fantasy) game entry, if I'm correct."
"So can you tease us?
Can you give us a little bit of a glimpse into what's going on here?
Well, I used to write one every three months in the 80s, and now I'm writing one every two years."
"So obviously I've slowed up a bit over time.
So I'm only in the note-making stage at the moment.
Okay.
My last book came out last year, The Dungeon on Blood Island."
"And a lot of people want to go back to Port Blacksand.
The City of Thieves is a very popular choice.
So I think we might start in Port Blacksand because it's this awful place of pirates and vagabonds and thieves, and everyone's trying to do you over."
"So that's always a good place to start, to punish the reader, and then set them off on a quest.
And the quest, it might involve some jungle elements because I've just been on a holiday in Cambodia and seen all these incredible temples that are kind of enveloped by trees."
"And I got quite inspired, like I did with Death Trap Dungeon.
That was after a holiday trekking in Northern Thailand.
There was a lot of elements of that."
"And so wherever I go, I try and take notes.
So look out for some jungle, temple, and Port Blacksand.
The elements, looking forward to those.
Okay, closing one."
"It's the 50th anniversary of Games Workshop.
So looking back at what it was and looking forward at what, for example, Warhammer is going to be with Henry Cavill's series."
"You've been asked about this by the audience.
How do you feel about that?
Well, first of all, I can't believe it's 50 years.
I'm sure I look just exactly the same as I did back then."
"But it's great that Henry Cavill is taking charge of taking Warhammer to the silver screen.
He's a games player.
He loves Warhammer."
"And so it should be in safe hands.
Plus Games Workshop are renowned for maintaining accuracy of their IP when it's licensed out.
So between Workshop and Henry Cavill, I think they're going to do an amazing job."
"And it's good to see that Hollywood in particular are now respecting games IP the way HBO did an amazing job with The Last of Us.
Respect to the IP, respect to the game, respect to the audience."
"Because the games audiences are, A, very knowledgeable.
They love their IP.
And it's a huge audience.
So don't insult it."
"That's beautiful.
Thank you once again.
Congratulations once again.
Enjoy Comic-Con.
Gracias por todo."
"Gracias."
